Apple Keynote just started streaming | Hacker News Reader

Apple Keynote just started streaming

events.apple.com.edgesuite.net

36 pointssamiq62 comments

I'm really surprised with how well that worked.

I sat on my couch and watched it on my TV with a coffee. Great fun. Way better than having to endure that idiotic Engadget commentary.

The thing is that they had a hard upper limit on how many clients connected and they wouldn't allow any more past that limit. That kinda makes it less impressive, IMO.

Live blogging links (both auto refresh with pics, commentary etc.):

Gdgt: http://live.gdgt.com/2010/09/01/live-apple-fall-2010-event-c...

Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/01/live-from-apples-fall-201...

I don't know if it's just my browser but gdgt's is better - engadget the ad whores refresh the entire page.

"Streaming video requires Safari 4 or 5 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard or Safari on iOS 3 or later."

Cheers Apple, I'm running Windows XP !

A Couple of URLS to try

http://qthttp.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1009qpeijrfn/sl.m3u8 (try this in Windows Quicktime?)

and

http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/sep/1009qpeijrfn/1009oiub...

I can't tell if they work or not but those are in the source of the page.

Not working on Leopard 10.5 either

The m3U8 file is working for me on the newest quicktime (which I think is only Snow Leopard). You need the newest quicktime for HLS Streaming to work.

Neither of those works in the nightly build of VLC I just compiled on Ubuntu.

The livestream has only buffered for me once. Other than that it's been flawless. Very impressive.

I'm getting some stuttering, which is pretty annoying.. When it doesn't stutter it looks great though!

Very impressive quality too. Better than TV.

Yeah, I had to restart a couple of times and it stuttered a little, but I'm very impressed because I'm running a 3G (freshly downgraded to iOS3).

I'm also impressed by the battery life. I watched the whole thing over wifi and lost about 1/3 battery.

99USD for an Apple TV. I bet the people launching the Boxee Box in November are currently very nervous.

Maybe not for this specific iteration of the product but definitely the next iteration.

This "first" offering by Apple certainly falls in line with their tradition product release of introducing a new product with less-than-stellar specifications (No HDMI?). Only to update it a year from now.

That means Boxee might be in the lead this December but will get leapfrogged a year from now, and to boot Apple gets 6 months to improve upon any shortcomings with Boxee's product.

Not sure I understand. The one they launched today is not their first. It's an updated version that is a quarter of the size, has HDMI and is less than half the price of the old one at 99USD...

This is another open/closed debate. Boxee is pretty easy to make new channels for. AppleTV will always be more exclusive. And Boxee has a full QWERTY keyboard on the back of the remote :-)

I do like Boxee. I use it myself. But the new Boxee Box is going to cost twice as much as a new Apple TV, and I'd bet my right nut the hardware wont look as nice. So it better have some good advantages.

The Boxee hardware looks AWESOME!

Box: http://vimeo.com/13398124

Remote: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcm95c_ces-2010-handson-wit...

It doesn't look horrible. It looks about 40 to 50 times bigger than the new Apple TV though...

As a developer, that sounds excellent. It will be a total market failure. :(

If the new Apple TV is a big success they can integrate it with Ping and we may finally have the Facebook killer we've been waiting for. Monetization would not be an issue since the whole social network is essentially an advert for the iTunes store. I've always found music and screen related discussion much more compelling than personal updates or messages, and I don't think I'm alone, or even in the minority (it's just I have the savvy to find good online communities for such discussion, unlike say my parents).

Facebook is about baby pictures, girls/boys night out, kids soccer results, and "how the hell are you". This is no facebook killer, but it may bleed off X% of discussions that deals with media.

It's just that like others have said, Ping is so highly monetized. I can imagine Facebook shedding users as they get desperate for cash and introduce annoying adverts or disable useful features, meanwhile Ping will pay for itself and possibly expand to be a complete FB rival. Just wild speculation of course.

Anyone care to take bets on this "Ping" feature? I just can't see it taking off, but it could just be that I hang out in the wrong crowds.

Seems like they can give Last.fm a run for their money.

A potential big threat for Twitter as it's a much richer way of following musicians - and if video content on iTunes starts to take off then also actors etc.

I've never known anybody that actually likes iTunes. They use it begrudgingly. I don't see why anyone would want to spend more time in it.

There's quite a few people who use iPhones/iPod Touches, though.

I do like iTunes. I even used it as my music player on Windows when I was still using that OS.

Personally I love iTunes, but I have heard it's less impressive on Windows systems. The only other legitimate complaint I know is that it's become bloated with features that not every user needs (if you don't have an iSomething, for example).

I use iTunes for playing music when I'm using my Apple computers. I suppose, I neither like it nor dislike it. It sits there playing music. It's not something I consciouslly "use" all that much.

Apple generally has really good perspective about what people want, but it seems to me that they often really miss the mark with iTunes. For instance, it drives my partner up the wall that she can't search iBooks in iTunes.

Ping sounds like a miss to me, and there have been a lot of itunes features over the years that have fallen flat.

I'll take that bet. 160M accounts solves the "get traction" problem of most social networks. Once you get outside of the geek community, people love iTunes.

I take this back. I have played with "ping" for a few days and it is bad. It feels like a "minimum viable product" where they forgot the "viable" bit.

First thought through my mind when Ping was announced was "MySpace is definitely doomed"

I think it's been doomed for a few years now, really. Steve even neglected to mention MySpace in his presentation -- he compared Ping to Facebook and Twitter.

Maybe it's just me, but I've almost completely forgotten about MySpace when I think "social networks".

I'm going to bet that most of my fellow betters are about as far off in their predictions as all the people saying "Who actuall wants a giant iPad Touch?" a few months ago.

Without fail, every time I need to use QuickTime on a Windows box it doesn't work.

I was really convinced of the "iTunes Unplugged" thing when a Daring Fireball reader interpreted the invitation that way, and now they're playing the MTV Unplugged version of "Layla."

To be fair to them, their easy listening music stream is lovely on the iPad. Watching the theatre fill up isn't really what I was hoping to watch though.

Netflix - Good or bad news for them?

They're on the Apple TV, so that's a plus. But Apple are now direct competitors, and they control the platform.

no. Apple is a PPV vendor. If they offered a flat-rate subscription they'd be competing with Netflix; they're not.

They're both selling content to watch on your TV. Albeit with different business models. They are both after $X a month, just in different ways.

Apple will buy Netflix, if they can get it past the feds.

I can't see any reason why they would do this now. Apple already have the infrastructure to distribute the content, the user accounts, relationships with studios etc.

Apple could set up Netflix in a couple of months - it's little more than a new pricing structure. Any acquisition would be for existing subscribers only, and would be way below today's NFLX valuation.

yes. I can rent 9 tv episodes per month for the price of netflix's most common plan.

Blockbuster will be thrilled to learn that they're not competing with Netflix. You should hurry up and tell them before they go out of business.

blockbuster also offers flat-rate subscription services.

...

I get your humor, I just wanted to be precise :)

Working for you? Not working for me yet. Leo 10.5 might be the cause? I'm in Europe, the site seems a bit sluggish to reload. I wonder if they manage to pull it off, Google IO had quite a few drop-outs.

is it confirmed that the new ipod touch has a cellphone like microphone?

It would be a pretty crappy Facetime device if it didn't.

Yes, it's in the specs page that there's a speakerphone and a mike.

Walk around with a wifi hotspot dongle and an ipod touch and seems like you've got an iphone4 and unlimited VOIP calls.

I'm in seoul and it has not frozen once... and the streaming quality is HD... sadly due to their streaming tech it only works on apple products

Steve, no one gives a fuck about photo slideshows.

That was actually the most powerful moment in the event for me. I think that people really connect with being able to come home and show their pictures from the day to their girlfriend or family.

I very rarely do this, I just use Windows photo preview. I must be the exception. Being downvoted is a great way to force you to rethink something.

People use their TVs for watching TV shows and films. I can't imagine many people being excited about a photo slideshow capability.

Almost every TV and DVD/BR player now comes with the slideshow ability. My Xbox, Blu-ray player, AND my TV can play Netflix content. The latter two can play YouTube.

It's getting a bit stupid, and there is zero novelty to adding any of those to new devices.

They can all play my own video and audio files too. The singular complaint about video is that not all mainstream formats are accepted (esp. higher end like the 22Mbps AVC from my camcorder), but Apple would be the last company I would expect to widen the range of format support.

I never use the slideshow feature on my Apple TV now because I'd have to set up photo syncing with my computer, have all my latest photos on it (of course they're by far the most likely to be the ones that I'd want to show and by far the least likely for me to have already synced), etc etc. But if I could just whip out my iPhone and a couple of taps later be showing some photos from it on my TV... well, I might use that. Once or twice, at least. :)

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